BENNY VISITS “AVALON”

In the last few days I’ve been listening to the Benny Goodman Festival being broadcast on WKCR-FM (if you’re out of range of this New York City FM station, you can hear it online at www.wkcr.org). Whenever I turn on the radio a Goodman small group is eagerly exploring AVALON at a jaunty tempo, a coincidence that both amuses and puzzles me.

Now, I don’t plan to accuse Goodman of being an aging artist caught in his own boredom, but the frequency with which jazz musicians return to their own narrowing repertoire of familiar songs to improvise on is worth comment.

I know that Hot Lips Page famously said (to whom?) “The material is immaterial,” and Bob Rusch has gently reminded me that jazz is about what one does with the material rather than the material itself. “‘T’ain’t what you do, it’s the way that’cha do it,” sang Trummy Young.

And anyone brave enough to improvise in public at the tempos Goodman favored should, by law, have the right to choose his or her own favorite set of chord changes — no matter whether the improviser in question is Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong, Mary Lou Williams, or John Coltrane. But I’ve also heard some of the finest jazz artists turn in established solos on familiar pieces for their features, occasionally playing something quite moving, but more often falling back on set routine. I think of Jo Jones’s CARAVAN, of Buddy Tate’s BODY AND SOUL, of Vic Dickenson’s IN A SENTIMENTAL MOOD, and so on.

One could, of course, make the case that jazzmen have “master solos” and “polished performances” to fall back on, because improvisation is such a demanding art. And Ricky Riccardi has made the point that Louis Armstrong’s versions of INDIANA that often began his later performances were anything but rote repetition.

But Benny himself (according to Ross Firestone’s sweet-natured biography) seems to have been dissatisfied with the music he played in his last decade, saying to someone, “You can’t play LADY BE GOOD forever.” But he didplay AVALON for fifty years.

Did he play it so regularly because it was a song he loved from his childhood (it first appeared in 1920)? Did he return to it because it was one of his proven hits, a selection that his audience — sometimes made up of people who had cheered him on in 1937 — wanted, expected, and waited for? Did he feel a responsibility to please the people who had paid to hear him with a medley of his Greatest Hits? Or was playing AVALON something that gave him pleasure in itself — both as a stunning ride over the chord changes and as a way of making an exciting performance? I can’t begin to say.

And some of the performances of AVALON I’ve heard on WKCR-FM are justly thrilling — not just in terms of technique and facility, but as musical expressions — evidence of an older artist still finding “something new to say” on a familiar text. Some of them sound like Goodman playing at being Benny Goodman — with playing that is technically exciting but not especially creative improvised music.

The only time I was fortunate enough to see Goodman in person — at a great distance — was at a Carnegie Hall concert in 1974 or 1975, with a truly all-star group including Bobby Hackett and Roy Eldridge (!). Of course, the King offered us AVALON, STOMPIN’ AT THE SAVOY, and DON’T BE THAT WAY to enthusiastic applause, but I was much more moved by Hackett’s choice of a feature number — an uptempo SECRET LOVE, which I can still dimly hear in my head as I write this.

Does this make me a snob for asking my beloved jazz heroes to “be original”? I don’t know. Perhaps if I had been able to ask Benny why he explored and re-explored AVALON, he would have said, “I like it.” And that would have been enough, even for me. Any artist who’s given us so much for such a long time is entitled to his idiosyncracies.

One response to “BENNY VISITS “AVALON””

Repetitive repertory?Just listened to one of BG’s last recorded concerts on KCR. He soloed Sondheim’s You Must Meet My Wife from A Little Night Music. First time I’ve ever heard ANY jazz artist play that! Maybe that’s why I haven’t tired of his Avalon, even after hearing it 40 more times this week alone. It’s all very subjective. Bechet, on Dear Old Southland, may have always interpolated that bit of the Miserere from Il Trovatore. I know he did circa 1947 at the first jazz concert I ever attended (Town Hall). It moved me greatly that afternoon, as well as the several times I saw him play it later. And I still eagerly await it on his recordings. Yet, every time I hear ANY of Louis’ recordings of Ain’t Misbehavin’, I know he’ll invariably take that “Rhapsody In Blue clarinet-phrase” trumpet break, and I may sort of brace myself as it briefly comes and goes. But…his glorious privilege always to play it that way…mine to hear it. As I say, it’s all very subjective.